Collateral Damage

excerpted from the book

The Perpetual Prisoner Machine

How America Profits From Crime

by Joel Dyer

Westview Press, 2001, paper

p177
David B. Kopel, Prison Blues: How America's Foolish Sentencing Policies Endanger Public Safety, May 17, 1994
In the last fifteen years, American elected officials have required prisons to engage in a bold social experiment. The historical prison policy - the incarceration of violent criminals - has been replaced with a policy of using prisons mainly to punish drug offenders with increasingly severe, mandatory terms in increasingly overcrowded prisons. The social experiment has been a failure.

p177
... American voters have fallen prey to the old "bait-and-switch" routine. When politicians take their public opinion polls, they see that the electorate has an exaggerated concern about being victimized by violent crime - the type they see on their TVs nightly. As a result, politicians promise their constituents that they will wage a war against this violent crime, but this is where the switch comes into play.

In their attempt to appear as though they are following through on their campaign promises, politicians have enacted one impressive sounding draconian sentencing measure after another-three strikes, hundreds of mandatory sentences, and truth in sentencing. Subsequently, they have reported to their constituents that they have tripled the prison population. People naturally assume that this means that there are a million fewer violent criminals on the streets, but they are wrong. The truth is that 70 to 80 percent of all of those being affected by these incredibly harsh sentencing measures are nonviolent offenders-many of them first-time, low-level drug offenders, and most of them low-income minority citizens whose rehabilitation could be safely and more effectively accomplished outside the prison structure for a small fraction of the current cost to taxpayers.

By 1990, 88.9 percent of first-time drug offenders with no prior record were being sentenced to prison for an average term of 68.4 months by the federal courts. Only 79.4 percent of first-time violent offenders were sentenced to prison by the same courts, and those who had committed violent crimes were serving on average less than fifty-seven months behind bars. By 1997, Justice Department figures showed that the average time served by individuals convicted of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault had dropped to only forty-nine months.

Such statistics make perfect sense when you consider that even with the amazing growth in the number of prison beds in the United States since 1980, if mandatory minimum sentences are being applied disproportionately to nonviolent crimes such as drug cases, there simply isn't enough prison space to hold violent offenders not covered by the mandatory sentences. As a result, it can, and has been, argued that we are actually replacing violent offenders with nonviolent criminals in our prisons.

Such is the position taken by sociologist Robert Figlio, who suggests that most violent crimes are committed by a few sociopaths. Figlio believes that if these few repeat offenders were taken off the street for long periods of time, violent crime would be dealt a substantial blow. Figlio also believes that this has not been accomplished because of the lack of prison space, a result of the massive incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders.

David Kopel also holds this view. In his policy analysis for the CATO Institute titled Prison Blues, Kopel uses Department of Justice statistics to convincingly demonstrate that the actual sentences being served by those convicted of violent crime have been decreasing since 1980 as a result of the increasing sentences being served for nonviolent crimes. Likewise, a study conducted in Illinois found that incidents of violent crime in that state actually rose as a result of increased drug enforcement. The report found that the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders was forcing the early release of violent prisoners.

Although it may be true that violent criminals are being released to make room for nonviolent offenders sentenced under mandatory minimums, I believe that the overall danger to the public from such early releases has been greatly exaggerated by the media and law enforcement. Still, it is somewhat ironic that the war on violent crime, which we are told is being waged because the public wants it, has turned out to be a conflict that fills our prisons with so many nonviolent offenders that it is forcing the release of those whom the public rightfully fears the most. Clearly those who have established these misguided policies must do everything within their power to conceal the realities of their actions from the public Failure to do so would likely put an end to using crime as a campaign tool and in the end, it would significantly threaten the new multibillion-dollar industry that now revolves around prisons. As a result, a good deal of statistical spin has been generated to obscure the truth.

p181
In 1983 ... approximately one in twelve, or 57,975 inmates were locked up on drug charges. By 1993, only ten years later, 353,564 people-more than one out of every four inmates-were doing time as a result of drug infractions. Between 1985 and 1994, 71 percent of prisoners added to the federal prison system were imprisoned on drug charges, and the incarceration of one out of every three state prisoners added during this same period stemmed from drug arrests. Not only were most new prisoners doing time for drugs, they were doing more time than violent criminals, thanks to the mandatory sentences being dictated by Congress.

America's prison population is 94 percent male, even though women are now the fastest growing sector of those imprisoned. A full 65 percent of our prisoners never completed high school, which helps to explain why so many of them are illiterate. Thirty-three percent were unemployed and another 32 percent were making less than $5,000 per year at the time of their arrest. These last statistics clearly support the opinion that poverty is the single greatest influence over criminal behavior. Seventy-one percent of all prisoners have been convicted of nonviolent crimes, mostly for drug-related and property-offense violations. Nearly 60 percent of all those in prison or jail claim that they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time they committed their crime. Studies conducted in 1999 found that between 16 percent and 24 percent of all inmates are suffering from "extreme mental problems." And finally, in the l990s, the majority of all prisoners are minority citizens.

Since 1984, as a result of what has been described as "the discriminatory nature" of the Sentencing Reform Act, in addition to the mandatory sentences established by Congress and the racially defined law enforcement practices now being applied in jurisdictions all across the country, the black and Hispanic prison populations have exploded. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of black males imprisoned for drug offenses increased by 429 percent. The number for black females incarcerated for drugs during this same period skyrocketed by 828 percent, and the number of Hispanic drug offenders in prison swelled by 320 percent. In contrast, the number of white drug offenders being imprisoned during this same period barely doubled, despite the fact that the majority of U.S. drug users are white.

According to The Sentencing Project, an independent source of policy analysis and data established in 1986 and widely used by both news media and policymakers, African Americans constitute only 13 percent of all monthly drug users, yet they account for 35 percent of all arrests

for the possession of drugs, 55 percent of all drug convictions, and a shocking 74 percent of all those receiving drug-related prison sentences. Because of this multiple, which logic tells us has its roots in race-biased actions on the part of law enforcement, the courts, and those who write the laws, thirty-eight state prison systems reported significant increases in the racial disparity of their prison populations between 1988 and 1994. By the end of this period, the incarceration of blacks in all state prisons combined was 7.66 times that of whites. Twelve states and the District of Columbia reported that black incarceration was running at more than ten to one compared to whites.

Like other aspects of the bait-and-switch approach to fighting crime, this disparity in incarceration rates of different racial groups has nothing to do with the commission rates of violent crimes. The imprisonment of black violent offenders increased at a nearly identical rate to that of white violent offenders during this same period, which means that the 7.66 to 1 differential in black and white incarceration has most likely resulted from nonviolent drug convictions.

There is no better or more damning example of racist sentencing practices than the well-publicized crack versus powder cocaine mandatory sentences. These two forms of the same drug have been treated in wildly differing fashions by Congress, even though the only major difference in these two types of cocaine-despite media hype to the contrary-is in the color of the hands they are most often found at the time of arrest-crack in brown, powder in white. This is not to say that more blacks than whites use crack but rather that more blacks are arrested for crack than whites. In fact, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, 64.4 percent of crack users are white and only 26.6 percent are black. Even so, a study conducted in 1992 by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that 91.3 percent of the people who were sentenced under the federal crack laws were black. Only 3 percent of those sentenced for federal crack offenses were white. These lopsided statistics become even more alarming when you realize that the crack cocaine sentencing guidelines that have been established by Congress are 100 times more severe than those for powdered cocaine.

Since the passage of the 1986 Crime Bill, a person caught with 5 grams of crack receives a mandatory sentence of five years, and 5.1 grams draws a ten-year sentence. With regard to powdered cocaine, the same bill required the possession of 500 grams to trigger an equal sentence. Crack cocaine is more prevalent in low-income communities because it is considerably cheaper than the powdered version of the drug, which tends to be a fashionable high among people who more closely resemble the appearance and status of those in Congress-wealthy and white.

p185
As a result of establishing sentencing guidelines and law-enforcement practices that prey upon those living in poverty while tending to allow the wealthy to avoid prison, nearly one in three of all black American men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine are now under the supervision of the criminal justice system on any given day. And as I mentioned previously, if the current race-biased trends in our justice system continue, it is estimated that by the year 2020, two out of three African-American men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-tour will be in prison, at which time we will find ourselves incarcerating 6.9 million of our minority citizens. Is it any wonder that some critics of our current criminal justice policies have once again begun to use the "S" word-"slavery"?

p186
Jerome Miller, former youth corrections officer
The race card has changed the whole playing field. Because the prison system doesn't affect a significant percentage of young white men, we'll increasingly see prisoners treated as commodities. For now the situation is a bit more benign than it was back in the nineteenth century, but I'm not sure it will stay that way for long.

p223
Shaheen Borna, "Free Enterprise Goes to Prison," 1986

"Since profits depend on the existence and expansion of the prison population, corporations will attempt to increase both the number of prisoners and the length of their stay."

p239
Reinhold Niebuhr, Children of Light and Children of Darkness, 1944

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

p252
Voltaire

"The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third."

p255
National Criminal Justice Commission, 1995

"It troubles the Commission that the size of the American prison population and the number of people living in poverty both increased dramatically in the 1980s. Worse, the growth of each seemed to feed off oft he growth of the other. This is because funding for prison expansion came largely at the expense of programs designed to alleviate poverty."

p261
Herbert I. Schiller, Information Inequality, 1996

"The United States global industrial pre-eminence may be slipping, but the domestic output and international sale of one of its manufacturers is booming-packaged consciousness. Packaged consciousness-a one-dimensional, smooth-edged cultural product-is made by the ever expanding goliaths of the message and image business. Gigantic entertainment- information complexes exercise a near-seamless and unified private corporate control over what we think, and think about."

p267
Some states already have as many as five black males in prison for every one in college...

p267
So long as black families constitute a disproportionately high percentage of the impoverished households in our country, they will continue to be sucked into the prisoner machine's turbines at a disproportionately high rate.

p267
... a nearly inconceivable 4 million mostly poor U.S. citizens have already lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction. This includes 1.5 million African Americans, including 14 percent of all black males. This stripping of voting rights is seriously impacting the very urban areas where a healthy electorate is most needed in order to effect change quickly, and the number of low-income minority citizens losing their right to self-determination is continuing to grow like the number of hamburgers sold at McDonald's. If this trend continues at the current rate, it is estimated that 40 percent of the next generation of black men will not have the right to vote. They will truly have achieved commodity status.

The Perpetual Prisoner Machine

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